Sally and Jason out into the parking lot, she glanced back at Arthur Wiseman.
He looked as worried as she felt.
Sergeant Carl Bronski stared at the pile of computer printouts, and shrugged helplessly. “I’m sorry, Mrs. Corliss, but I’m afraid I’m just not following you.”
Once again Lucy tried to explain what the columns of numbers meant, and once again Bronski listened attentively. When she was done, though, he shook his head sadly.
“But even you admit it doesn’t really mean anything.”
“It means that CHILD is up to something,” Lucy replied. “I don’t know what, and I don’t know why, but something’s going on.”
Bronski nodded tiredly. It had been going on for two hours, and though he understood full well how Lucy Corliss was feeling, he didn’t see what he could do about it. “But if you won’t even tell me where these came from, and if you can’t really explain what they mean, what do you expect me to do?”
“I expect you to find out what CHILD was doing with my son,” Lucy said. “I expect you to do what you’re supposed to do, and investigate this.”
“But, Mrs. Corliss, there isn’t anything to investigate. A few pages of numbers that don’t really mean anything. It’s just not something I can use to justify an investigation of an outfit the size of CHILD.”
There was a long silence. Lucy sank back in her chair. “All right,” she said, her voice suddenly calm. “How about this? How about if I talk to the person I got this information from, and they agree to talk to you, to explain what all this means? Will you at least listen to h—them?”
Her, Bronski thought. Will I listen to her. But who is she? Another hysterical mother? But if that’s all she is, where’d she get this stuff? Finally, he said, “Okay. You talk to her, and if she wants to talk to me, ITI listen.”
Seeming satisfied, Lucy Corliss gathered her things together and left the Eastbury police department. But long after she was gone, Carl Bronski sat at his desk, thinking.
He remembered Randy Corliss very well, and though he had never admitted it to anybody, he had had his private doubts that the boy would run away.
Yes, he decided, if Lucy Corliss’s friend wanted to talk to him, he would listen.
Chapter 17
RANDY CROSSLISS LAY IN BED in a small room at the rear of the main floor of the Academy. His breathing was steady, and all the instruments wired to his small body displayed normal readings. His hands, covered with bandages, rested at his sides. A white-clad figure hovered over him, observing him closely, comparing the readings on the instruments to the evidence displayed by Randy’s physical being.
Randy’s eyes fluttered slightly, then opened.
He looked up and frowned uncertainly. Above him, the ceiling was unfamiliar. It was the wrong color, and the cracks in the plaster weren’t in the right places.
He tried to remember what had happened. He’d been playing a game with his friends, and they’d done something to him, something that had frightened him.
He’d been running, and then they’d caught him, and—and what?
The fence. They’d thrown him against the fence, and he’d felt a burning sensation, and—and—
But there wasn’t any more. After that, it was all a blank.
Suddenly, a face loomed above him, and he recognized Dr. Hamlin, who seemed to be smiling at him.
“How are we doing?” he heard Hamlin ask.
“What happened?” Randy countered. He hated it when people acted like however you felt was how they felt too.
“You had a little accident,” Dr. Hamlin explained. “Someone left the electricity on in the fence, and you stumbled into it. But you’re going to be fine. Just fine.” He reached out to touch Randy, but Randy suddenly had a vision of Dr. Hamlin holding a scalpel, and cutting into Peter Williams’s brain. He shrank away from the doctor’s hands.
“What’s going to happen to me?”
“Happen to you? What could happen to you?”
“I—I don’t know,” Randy faltered. Then, for the first time, he became aware that his hands were bandaged. “Is something wrong with my hands?”
Again, Hamlin smiled. “Well, why don’t we just take those bandages off and have a look,” he suggested. He seated himself on a chair next to the bed and began unwrapping the gauze from Randy’s hands.
The skin, clear and healthy-looking, showed no signs of the severe burns that had been apparent when Randy had been brought in that afternoon.
For the first few minutes, as he had examined the unconscious child, Hamlin had been tempted